


Tuskan

by Ori_Cat



Category: Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Genre: Alien Culture, Canon-Typical Violence, Drinking, Gen, Reposted following reviewal, all alcohol is beer to me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2019-03-31 00:59:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13963932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ori_Cat/pseuds/Ori_Cat
Summary: There is always another point of view.





	Tuskan

Oh, it feels so good to get off my feet. I curl up beside the fire and start picking apart the laces of my boots. I think I’ve bruised my feet all the way to the bone today. My friend Khthorr’ sits down to my left with a sigh of relief as well. 

“Catch anything?” This from Cheldik, sitting on the opposite side of the fire. 

“Nothing. Not even a rat.” It’s not technically true: we found the nest of one of the white-spotted hawks underneath a small outcrop of stone, with two eggs in it. We each drank the insides of one - hunting is hungry work at the best of times - with a quiet apology to the mother hawk who would come back later to find them gone. 

“Here, have a drink, cheer you up.” Someone waves a jug in my direction. I grab it and take a deep swallow. 

“Hey, not all of it, you greedy bastard!” 

“Sorry.” I pass it on to Khthorr’. Truth is, I could probably drink the whole thing and still be thirsty. We didn’t get enough water for a hunt, either. Although I suppose nobody did, today, even back with the main group. 

“So, really nothing?” a man - I think his name is Ruvha - asks. He does a fairly good job of not sounding disappointed in us. Not perfect. Even I’m disappointed in us, though, so I can’t really blame him. 

“Sorry, man,” Khthorr’ shrugs. 

“Ah, well, better luck tomorrow.” It won’t be us tomorrow, but probably Theqac and Urorur’. Head out too frequently, especially under-equipped and under-watered, and one day the desert won’t give you back. And Khthorr’ and I - we’re always the ones volunteering to go, because it’s always easier for me to breathe and to smile in the emptiness outside of camp, and Khthorr’, I think, wants the confidence. The ability. To be able to know that there are few better navigators and trackers than him. 

What this means, really, is that the horizon could swallow the two of us more easily than anyone else here, and no-one would be surprised. 

“It’ll be okay. Meet’s in ten days, we won’t starve ’til then.” It’s not a particularly enthusiastic attempt to cheer everyone up. We all know we probably won’t starve, but nobody’s looking forwards to being hungry and miserable for ten days either. 

“Take some away from them,” says Cheldik, with a vague gesture towards the two tents, set up on the edge of the camp again, holding the captives. 

“Can’t. Got to sell ‘em, right? Starved people don’t go for much.” The jug is passed to me again, feeling a certain amount lighter. I take a mouthful and prop it on my knee. If anyone else wants to get any drunker, they can darn well ask me first. 

“Could dump them.” 

“What part of ‘sell’ didn’t you get?” 

“You don’t know the first thing about commerce, do you, Ruvha?” 

“Nope,” Ruvha responds proudly. I wouldn’t be proud of ignorance, but I suppose to each his own. 

The problem is, three nights ago the carrion birds got into our food, tore all the bags and the waterskins - all our beautiful water draining away into the dust - and stole the meat, and spilled the grain into the wind, and what they didn’t drag away was fouled like they always do. I feel like a lot of problems would be solved if the carrion birds wouldn’t defecate on their food. 

“At least we’ve still got the beer.” 

“Yeah, that’s ‘cause not even the carrion birds’d touch this stuff.” 

Everyone falls companionably silent again. It’s starting to get cold, the deep cold of moonless, million-star nights. Khthorr’ shivers and scoots closer to the fire. I wish we didn’t have to sleep, that we could sit around fires under stars all night, every night. Although I suppose, if that was the case, the dark wouldn’t be special anymore. 

“Well, I should probably go.” Cheldik stands and stretches with a groan. “Can’t keep the wife waiting.” That gets him a laugh as he goes. 

“Speaking of which,” someone asks, “when are we going to hear about you getting yourself someone?” 

Oh no. You could’ve asked anything. Why did it have to be that, why to me? 

Her name is Yaska. She was beautiful, like the moons or like the horizon. She danced with me at her sister’s marriage, and we could mend tent and harness together and talk for hours, and - well, what matters is that I love her, more than anyone else. I would have asked her to marry me. I think she would have agreed. 

But two winters ago many got sick, and died, and among them was Yaska. And so I could not ask, not yet. But I will wait. 

“Oh, he won’t,” Khthorr’ says. 

“How do you know?” 

“I’m your best friend,” - he turns to me, takes the jug out of my hand, and drinks - “and I can see your future. One day, you are going to go out, and the sky is going to see you and fall in love with you, and she will descend to the ground in the form of a woman-“ 

“Stop it!” I reach over and hit him on the shoulder. There is laughter, at me or at his story I’m not sure. 

“-in the fields of the sky and live happily ever after.” 

“Okay, no more for you,” someone calls out, and everyone breaks out laughing again. 

My face burns. He’s such an idiot. Although I suppose it has stopped the revealing questions about my love life. 

“You do know we’re never letting you forget this,” Ruvha says. 

“Shut up!” I grab the jug from Khthorr’ and throw it across the fire at him. He catches it right before it hits his face. 

“Nice.” 

Ruvha looks inside it. “Hey, you drank it all!” 

“Wasn’t me!” Khthorr’ is innocently not paying attention to either of us. Typical. 

Slowly, everyone goes, probably because there’s no point in staying awake if you don’t have beer. Eventually, it’s just Khthorr’ and I, and he moves around to sit on the other side of the fire. The world is warm and fuzzy around the edges, and I know I should go into the tent before it gets really cold and before my muscles all seize up, but I don’t want to move right now- 

-and a sound breaks the quiet, a sound like the buzzing like insects or an arc of electricity, and blue light streams across the sand as though a star has fallen to the ground behind me, and I see Khthorr’ flinch at the light and try to stand- 

-and pain explodes in my back and I would scream but my body won’t obey me- 

-across the fire Khthorr’ pulls back in horror, shielding himself from whatever hurt me- 

-and- 

-my vision fills with blackness but my hearing stays, and the night fills up with screaming.


End file.
